Gist:Durbar is a first-person account of some of the most impactful incidents that took place at the hands of the Central Government. It begins with an account of the Emergency in 1975, when the author began her career as a junior reporter with The Statesman, and moves on to chronicle the instabilities of the times that followed.

The Emergency was a landmark event that set the course of the spiral of incidents that followed it: Indira Gandhi’s assassination followed by Rajiv Gandhi’s ascent to power, a period fraught with struggles and turbulence in the government. He was accused of following nepotism in the corridors of power, and was associated with many controversies such as the the anti-Sikh riots, the Bhopal Gas tragedy and the Bofors scam, which served to tarnish the impeccable image of the Congress in the days to come.

Durbar provides a vivid detailing of an insider’s account of some of the most troubled times our country has been through and is, in a sense, a compelling history of our past.

It was published in the year 2013 by Hachette India and is available in paperback.

Key Features:

The book is an interesting chronicle of some of the most monumental events in India’s past.

It is authored by someone who has been closely involved with some of the most authoritative leaders in the corridors of power.

Comments: thanks to @Berkut for recommending this. its a tough-to-put-down book. have gone through only initial 30-40 pages. very interesting read.

@OneGrimPilgrim, I'm not getting any updates when you are communicating with me or tagging me.

To all the fellow travellers please check out:
"Open Secrets by M.K.Dhar" - excellent insights into the workings of the intelligence bureau.
"Courage and Conviction" by Gen. V.k. Singh.... Excellent account of the corruption the top echleons of the forces used to face

On 20 October 1962, high in the Himalayas on the banks of the fast-flowing Nam Ka Chu, over 400 Indian soldiers were massacred and the valley was overrun by soldiers of China’s People’s Liberation Army. Over the course of the next month, nearly 4,000 soldiers were killed on both sides and the Indian Army experienced its worst defeat ever. The conflict (war was never formally declared) ended because China announced a unilateral ceasefire on 21 November and halted its hitherto unhindered advance across NEFA and Ladakh. To add to India’s lasting shame, neither Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru nor the Indian Army was even aware that the ‘war’ had ended until they heard the announcement on the radio—despite the Indian embassy having been given the information two days earlier. This conflict continues to be one of our least understood episodes. Many books have been written on the events of the time, usually by those who were involved in some way, anxious to provide justification for their actions. These accounts have only succeeded in muddying the picture further. What is clear is that 1962 was an unmitigated disaster. The terrain on which most of the battles were fought (or not fought) was remote and inaccessible; the troops were sorely underequipped, lacking even warm clothing; and the men and officers who tried to make a stand were repeatedly let down by their political and military superiors. Time and again, in Nam Ka Chu, Bum-la, Tawang, Se-la, Thembang, Bomdila—all in the Kameng Frontier Division of NEFA in the Eastern Sector—and in Ladakh and Chusul in the Western Sector, our forces were mismanaged, misdirected or left to fend for themselves. If the Chinese Army hadn’t decided to stop its victorious campaign, the damage would have been far worse.In this definitive account of the conflict, based on dozens of interviews with soldiers and numerous others who had a first-hand view of what actually happened in 1962, Shiv Kunal Verma takes us on an uncomfortable journey through one of the most disastrous episodes of independent India’s history.

Subhash Kak is a widely known scientist and Vedic scholar. Currently a professor at Louisiana State University, he has authored ten books and more than 200 research papers in the fields of information theory, quantam mechanics, and Indic studies.

This extraordinary novel, first published in 1994, is set in a sweltering summer in 1930s Portugal. It follows the story of Pereira, a journalist for the culture column of a small Lisbon newspaper, as he struggles with his conscience and the restrictions imposed on his writing by the fascist regime of Antonio Salazar. When he meets a young activist named Monteiro Rossi, all Pereira’s past attempts to lead an apolitical life begin to fill him with shame. The most chilling thing about this novel is the way Tabucchi has structured it, from the very first line, as a piece of testimony given under duress—a forced instance of extended expression: “Pereira maintains he met him one summer’s day . . .”

The Flamethrowers, Rachel Kushner

This novel does so much in its 383 pages—visits so many places, toys with so many ideas. Kushner’s exploration of political turbulence in 1970s Italy is as fascinating as her scenes of artists colonizing an industrial SoHo, staging actions in the East Village, blurring the line between activism and art. In both its attention to language and its subject matter, The Flamethrowers shines a light on the value and fragility of freedom of expression. “All you could do with words,” one character says, “was turn them on their sides like furniture during a bombardment.”

go tell it on the mountain

Go Tell It on the Mountain, James Baldwin

John Grimes, the teenager at the heart of James Baldwin’s first novel, is a smart, confused adolescent boy in 1930s Harlem—the stepson of the minister of a storefront Pentecostal church. This is a coming-of-age story about a boy’s search for a means of expressing his own sexuality and spirituality, set against a backdrop of larger social and political repressions. When Baldwin writes of John’s heart hardening against religion, and against his father, we see that he is also beginning to question the wider freedoms withheld from African-Americans in his community.

A German officer is forced to occupy the home of a French girl and her aging uncle in Chartres during the Second World War. The family’s act of resistance against this outsider comes from just one act: silence. They refuse to let him access their story. Written in 1941 in France, and published secretly a year later in Paris by the underground press Editions de Minuit, this novel became the first in a series of works by members of the French Resistance that threw light on oppression and censorship across Europe.

white tears

White Tears, Hari Kunzru

Soon to be released in the US, White Tears follows two white New Yorkers in their twenties, Seth and Carter, who are united by an obsession with music. Kunzru’s examination of race relations, greed, freedom, and privilege, is bound together in this book by a story concerning ownership of an artist’s words. When Seth accidentally records an unknown singer in a park, Carter sends it out over the Internet, claiming it’s a long lost blues recording by a 1920s musician named Charlie Shaw. A fascinating, immersive novel that explores appropriation in all its forms.

Sinclair Lewis, It Can't Happen Here

It Can’t Happen Here, Sinclair Lewis

First published in 1935, Lewis’s novel is discovering a new readership in the age of Trump. It follows the unlikely election of an authoritarian named Buzz Windrip to the Presidency of the United States—an ascent that is viewed with horror by an editor at a small-town Vermont newspaper. Men and women who protest against Windrip are accused of being “silly socialists.” The press are dismissed as “irresponsible windbags.” At one point Lewis seems to offer us a slogan for 2017: “NOW is a fact that cannot be dodged.”

gone to the forest

Gone to the Forest, Katie Kitamura

Set on a farm in a nameless colonial country teetering on the brink of revolution, Kitamura’s brief and unforgettable novel brings us the experiences of wealthy white rulers as control begins to slip from their hands. The atmosphere of forced silence in the book—between the powerful and the oppressed, and between a damaged son and his cold father—is captured in sentences that break and bend at unexpected moments.

The Reluctant Fundamentalist, Moshin Hamid

The Reluctant Fundamentalist is a novel that is full of controversial acts of speech, and one that is also framed as such an act: the book is structured a monologue delivered by a young Pakistani man to a mysterious American. “It seems an obvious thing to say,” the narrator remarks at one point, “but you should not imagine that we Pakistanis are all potential terrorists, just as we should not imagine that you Americans are all undercover assassins.” Hamid is attuned to the dangers of dismissing criticism of the west as simple terrorist-talk, but he’s also interested in exploring the moments when characters, in their words or acts, conform to type.

The Feast of the Goat, Mario Vargas Llosa (trans. Edith Grossman)

This novel, published a few years before Vargas Llosa won the Nobel Prize for Literature, explores the network of acts, sometimes violent and sometimes peaceful, by which people in the Dominican Republic supported or resisted the regime of dictator Rafael Trujillo, known to some as “the Goat.” The book moves backward and forward in time, showing the domino effect of ideas, large and small, expressed by politicians and the citizens they attempt to control.

The Sympathizer, Viet Thanh Nguyen

“I’m a spy, a sleeper, a spook, a man of two faces. Perhaps not surprisingly, I am also a man of two minds.” So says the narrator of Nguyen’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, presenting himself as a captain in the Southern Vietnamese Army. The story he tells is of a point in time when empathy and honest expression seem impossible—a world of misinformation, coded messages, deceptions, multiple identities. The great feat of The Sympathizer lies in the way it draws these elements into its own moving, entertaining, unapologetic act of expression. It gives voice to Vietnamese characters who, in so many comparable novels and films, exist only as walk-on parts.

This extraordinary novel, first published in 1994, is set in a sweltering summer in 1930s Portugal. It follows the story of Pereira, a journalist for the culture column of a small Lisbon newspaper, as he struggles with his conscience and the restrictions imposed on his writing by the fascist regime of Antonio Salazar. When he meets a young activist named Monteiro Rossi, all Pereira’s past attempts to lead an apolitical life begin to fill him with shame. The most chilling thing about this novel is the way Tabucchi has structured it, from the very first line, as a piece of testimony given under duress—a forced instance of extended expression: “Pereira maintains he met him one summer’s day . . .”

The Flamethrowers, Rachel Kushner

This novel does so much in its 383 pages—visits so many places, toys with so many ideas. Kushner’s exploration of political turbulence in 1970s Italy is as fascinating as her scenes of artists colonizing an industrial SoHo, staging actions in the East Village, blurring the line between activism and art. In both its attention to language and its subject matter, The Flamethrowers shines a light on the value and fragility of freedom of expression. “All you could do with words,” one character says, “was turn them on their sides like furniture during a bombardment.”

go tell it on the mountain

Go Tell It on the Mountain, James Baldwin

John Grimes, the teenager at the heart of James Baldwin’s first novel, is a smart, confused adolescent boy in 1930s Harlem—the stepson of the minister of a storefront Pentecostal church. This is a coming-of-age story about a boy’s search for a means of expressing his own sexuality and spirituality, set against a backdrop of larger social and political repressions. When Baldwin writes of John’s heart hardening against religion, and against his father, we see that he is also beginning to question the wider freedoms withheld from African-Americans in his community.

A German officer is forced to occupy the home of a French girl and her aging uncle in Chartres during the Second World War. The family’s act of resistance against this outsider comes from just one act: silence. They refuse to let him access their story. Written in 1941 in France, and published secretly a year later in Paris by the underground press Editions de Minuit, this novel became the first in a series of works by members of the French Resistance that threw light on oppression and censorship across Europe.

white tears

White Tears, Hari Kunzru

Soon to be released in the US, White Tears follows two white New Yorkers in their twenties, Seth and Carter, who are united by an obsession with music. Kunzru’s examination of race relations, greed, freedom, and privilege, is bound together in this book by a story concerning ownership of an artist’s words. When Seth accidentally records an unknown singer in a park, Carter sends it out over the Internet, claiming it’s a long lost blues recording by a 1920s musician named Charlie Shaw. A fascinating, immersive novel that explores appropriation in all its forms.

Sinclair Lewis, It Can't Happen Here

It Can’t Happen Here, Sinclair Lewis

First published in 1935, Lewis’s novel is discovering a new readership in the age of Trump. It follows the unlikely election of an authoritarian named Buzz Windrip to the Presidency of the United States—an ascent that is viewed with horror by an editor at a small-town Vermont newspaper. Men and women who protest against Windrip are accused of being “silly socialists.” The press are dismissed as “irresponsible windbags.” At one point Lewis seems to offer us a slogan for 2017: “NOW is a fact that cannot be dodged.”

gone to the forest

Gone to the Forest, Katie Kitamura

Set on a farm in a nameless colonial country teetering on the brink of revolution, Kitamura’s brief and unforgettable novel brings us the experiences of wealthy white rulers as control begins to slip from their hands. The atmosphere of forced silence in the book—between the powerful and the oppressed, and between a damaged son and his cold father—is captured in sentences that break and bend at unexpected moments.

The Reluctant Fundamentalist, Moshin Hamid

The Reluctant Fundamentalist is a novel that is full of controversial acts of speech, and one that is also framed as such an act: the book is structured a monologue delivered by a young Pakistani man to a mysterious American. “It seems an obvious thing to say,” the narrator remarks at one point, “but you should not imagine that we Pakistanis are all potential terrorists, just as we should not imagine that you Americans are all undercover assassins.” Hamid is attuned to the dangers of dismissing criticism of the west as simple terrorist-talk, but he’s also interested in exploring the moments when characters, in their words or acts, conform to type.

The Feast of the Goat, Mario Vargas Llosa (trans. Edith Grossman)

This novel, published a few years before Vargas Llosa won the Nobel Prize for Literature, explores the network of acts, sometimes violent and sometimes peaceful, by which people in the Dominican Republic supported or resisted the regime of dictator Rafael Trujillo, known to some as “the Goat.” The book moves backward and forward in time, showing the domino effect of ideas, large and small, expressed by politicians and the citizens they attempt to control.

The Sympathizer, Viet Thanh Nguyen

“I’m a spy, a sleeper, a spook, a man of two faces. Perhaps not surprisingly, I am also a man of two minds.” So says the narrator of Nguyen’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, presenting himself as a captain in the Southern Vietnamese Army. The story he tells is of a point in time when empathy and honest expression seem impossible—a world of misinformation, coded messages, deceptions, multiple identities. The great feat of The Sympathizer lies in the way it draws these elements into its own moving, entertaining, unapologetic act of expression. It gives voice to Vietnamese characters who, in so many comparable novels and films, exist only as walk-on parts.

Eye for an Eye Decoding Global Special Operations and Irregular Warfare: A Vision for India

This book examines the historical contribution of special operations to counterterrorism and counter-insurgency worldwide, drawing lessons applicable to the Indian context. It suggests that rather than emulate the Anglo-American model of special operations, which emphasises technological superiority and high-visibility direct action, India should integrate special operations with aggressive diplomacy, by carrying out preparatory covert actions inside Pakistan. For this, tasking, intelligence, logistics and training need to be optimised for missions inside hostile urban localities, instead of the predominantly rural focus that special operations forces have traditionally developed. With Pakistan remaining committed to the strategic destabilisation of India, despite repeated peace overtures from New Delhi, the Indian Army and civilian intelligence community must be prepared to take the war to the adversary.

Barons Of Banking: Glimpses Of Indian Banking History provides an insight into the lives of six prominent personalities from various institutes of banking. Sorabji Pochkhanawala, one of the founders of the Central Bank of India, Sir Purshotamdas Thakurdas, Chintaman D. Deshmukh, the first Indian Governor of the Reserve Bank of India, A D Shroff, founder of the Investment Corporation of India, H T Parekh, the founder of HDFC and R K Talwar form the majority of contributors to the Indian banking scene.

The history of the institutions that are associated with each of the six noteworthy financiers forms a big part of Bakhtiyar Dadabhoy's book. The Central Bank of India, HDFC, Industrial Credit and Investment Corporation of India Ltd, Reserve Bank of India and State Bank of India are the five major banking institutes linked to the development of the country's banking and finance sector. The facts and figures of each are unravelled during the course of this book.

The committees associated with banking houses and their contribution had an impact in shaping the banking regimen, as stated in the book. A choice element in Barons Of Banking is an analysis of the spiteful relations between Sir James Grigg, the Finance Member of the Viceroy's Executive Council and Sir Osborne Smith, the first Governor of the RBI. The book moves towards the mandates and policies of the RBI and proves to be an affirmative read for bankers and non-bankers alike.

Tomcat's take

A mind blowing read from the eye watering sums of money handeled by hundi to the struggles of Sir Sorobji
From the extraodinary rise of Sir Purshotamdas Thakurdas to command the Imperial Bank of India
Its highly recomended to banking students

Superb books that are worth a read and available on line from Amazon etc. Happy reading!

This book explains the origins and nature of terrorism in Pakistan and examines the social, political and economic factors that have contributed to the rise of political violence there.

This book examines the rise of religious extremism in Pakistan, particularly since 1947, and analyzes its connections to the Pakistani army's corporate interests and U.S.-Pakistan relations. It includes profiles of leading Pakistani militant groups with details of their origins, development, and capabilities.

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